


tick

by oogenesis



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Abstract, Character Study, Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 17:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15778383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/pseuds/oogenesis
Summary: How to make a time bomb:





	tick

How to make a time bomb: rig the delicate internal mechanisms, the snowflake-tiny gears and cogs, the millisecond-precise springs, a masterpiece created with love and care, up to the trigger. Strap several pounds of explosive to the watch, into the spark of it, forcing its function beyond something no watch was meant to do. Start the countdown.

How to make a time bomb: renounce bombs. Renounce gunfire. Renounce being a rain of destruction, renounce all destruction, become devoted to peace; tuck yourself away in your tick-ticking hole. Now you are in the middle of one, a situation that cannot hold. Sooner or later it will explode. At the end of the countdown there is a knife, a welding gun, and a pile of slack mouths and stilled fingers out in the back, bleeding rust.

How to make a time bomb: You must make sure it goes off. That is what a time bomb does. If the clockmaker doesn't get it right—if the clockmaker is foolish and doomed—if the clockmaker has hands that can no longer make clocks like they used to—then the bomb will never go off. It will keep ticking into eternity, loud and unnerving, filling the air around it with its harsh mechanical death knell, winding up for an end that never comes. Everyone stand back, don't get too close, it could explode at any minute. For some reason it hasn't yet. Why hasn't it? What is it waiting for? What good is a time bomb, built to die, that can't even blow itself out of existence?

How to make a time bomb: Dissent, and wait.

**Author's Note:**

> i love a big fuck bird
> 
> comments (feedback, critique) appreciated as always!


End file.
